Thank you all for your comments. I'm replying to BB's questions, but in those replies I respond to some of the other points that have been raised.
B B:
No aversion or attraction at all apart from after NS? That's impressive. There's plenty in my experience that I would describe as "slightly unpleasant", which I've been putting down to subtle underlying aversion as I can make it go away by shifting to a non-clinging, non-conceptualizing mind.
Okay, I've been returning to some stressful situations in daily life and there is some aversion returning. However, there still seems to be something fundamentally different about the way I experience this aversion. Like I can completely watch it unfold with relative effortlessness. It doesn't seem to have the bite on me that it did in the past. I feel motivated to continue working with it using mindfulness, but I doesn't seem necessary in the same way. It's like the aversion no longer feels like a threat. Also, it's drastically diminished. In time this might show itself to be a change of degree rather than a change of kind, but so far it seems like a change of kind.
B B:
"a few days ago"
This makes me suspicious, as I've had several big fruitions that had me convinced that they were MCTB 4th path for a period of days only to eventually admit to myself that some aspect of perception was still slightly inadequate and unsatisfying. E.g. a sense of intention still coming from somewhere "other", a subtle feeling of "I am" not found in any particular body part, a subtle sense of presence/being, or a habitual conceptualizing. There have even been times where my perception has regressed after a day or two. Assuming you've had similar experiences, what makes you so sure this time?
I didn't say I was sure. In fact, I said quite explicitly that I was trying to be comfortable with not knowing. I agree that things will become clearer in time, and I may judge that I was too hasty in evaluating this state. However, I will say that the nature of the change was unlike anything I've experienced through dozens of third-path cycles. It's possible that it was just a particularly large new cycle fruition, but in general my experience has been that the impact of new fruitions gets less and less with each cycle. This shift felt almost as strong as stream entry. On a more meta-level, I'm starting to doubt that Daniel's description of 4th path as an endpoint is really accurate for everyone. I've spoken with enlightened teachers who have started out using Daniel's maps and eventually come to a point where they claim that Daniel's map stops making sense of their experience. They say that although they are pretty clear that they have experienced something like 4th path, it doesn't have all the characteristics that Daniel attributes to it. In particular, in their experience, it doesn't eliminate all duality. Therefore, my working definition of 4th Path is a bit different from Daniel's. My working definition is a thorough and permanent dis-embedding from that part of the mind that seeks to control personal experience. This leaves it open that one might still be embedded (identified with) other parts of the mind (those which are unattached to personal experience; more on this below).
B B:
"The exception to this seems to be Nirodha Samapatti which still feels like it taps me into something beyond what my mind has presently encompassed and permeated, it's like a whole world beyond my individual self that is still waiting to be uncovered."
Wow, that's a much deeper appreciation than I'm getting. What I've been taking to be NS is simply where I tune out of 8th jhana (not necessarily even a particularly hard one) and have a fruition that repositions the pressure in my head so that it goes from the back (for 8th) to the sides behind the ears (which I associate with 6th, though I'm not usually in a hard 6th at that point). There is a sharp increase in concentration that lasts for hours, bodily relaxation, and almost without fail it kicks off a new DN within a day. But on the whole I'm not finding it terribly interesting or impressive.
How is "never failing to kick off a new DN within a day" not interesting? To me, your observation underlines the importance of concentration states for making rapid progress in insight. Like I said, the sensations in my third eye, crown, and above my crown are the only ones the still seem attached (at least among the sensations I'm currently aware of). These attachments are only noticeable after jhana practice. When I wake up in the morning they are invisible and don't seem to affect the flow state. I'm sure that doing vipassana on these sensations would produce further progress of insight, which means cultivating NS in order to do this work seems like an good idea when I'm ready to continue progress of insight.
B B:
"That old "I" now exists in a fully immanent way in my body, my psyche, my perceptual world. It is not longer subject or object, but it's not gone either, it's just everywhere, in everything."
Could you elaborate on this? If it is no longer subject, why call it "I"? Try "asserting the external element" where you take the completely dispassionate/objective sense of seeing an inanimate object and apply it to the body/mind. Is there resistence to this, or a sense of encroaching on a subject? I've found it beneficial to continue beyond the point where it could be said there is only a subtle, diffuse feeling of "I am" (don't want to imply that I've made much progress in this).
I like that "external element" test. However, one interesting thing is that the further I go, the more compassionate and connected I feel by default to all external objects. Hence, I can feel the same towards my personal psyche as I do toward various external objects, yet, in neither case is this a state of dispassionate awareness. There is a sense of deep detachment from the contents of my psyche including emotions, but not indifference towards them. There is still a tender concern for them grounded in loving-kindness and compassion. I suppose I've always been more drawn to the Bodhisattva ideal of enlightenment than the arhat ideal, so perhaps that is why I'm developing in this way.
I have the sense that the "I" I was previously identified with was nothing more, and nothing less, than my body, psyche, thoughts, and external perceptual world. Now, I see these four aspects of reality as four distinct worlds that I can watch like a man looking through a telescope. I can zoom in on psyche and experience emotions and narrative in a lot of detail, or zoom in on body, or zoom in on world, or zoom in on conceptual thoughts, but in none of those cases do I get sucked into those experiences and identify with them. In certain respects, being zoomed in on a experience feels similar to being identified with it, but there is some piece missing that makes it so that I don't stick to the experience. It's more like watching an experience happen to somebody else, but as I said above, this should not be taken to imply that I feel indifferent toward them. There is a distinct feeling of interested compassion as I am aware of them, which is not noticeably different from my interested compassionate awareness of other people, animals, plants, and even inanimate objects. To me this is a strong illustration of the direct relevance of B.V. practices to the realization of insight.
B B:
"any "I" that is left in the higher realms"
I don't mean for this to start sounding antagonistic, but how is this not baseless speculation, or bordering on the kind of assumption-making the Buddha rejects in
SN 12.35?
Well, as I think I mentioned, I'm not a Buddhist. I'm a non-traditional theist who got stream entry and was then called to keep going down the insight path as part of my larger path of divine service. I believe that there is a divine intelligence who in some way partakes of our own intelligence. In fact, as I've mentioned in other posts on this forum, it seems to me that the Mahayana/Vajrayana take on Pure Awareness is very close if not identical to the theistic notion of God in God's ineffable fully transcendent aspect. The key basis for contemplatively grounded theism is not speculation, but rather the appreciation of how new content, form, and meaning, emanate out from the ineffable experience of God/Awareness/nibbana. Vajrayana traditions clearly believe in this kind of emanation when they speak of new Buddha Deities emanating out of "pure light of Awareness". Therefore, I classify them as theistic. In contrast, Theravada and the early Buddhist teachings do not acknowledge this phenomenon or do not appreciate its significance. But, this is a longer discussion that's not entirely relevant to the matter at hand.
In terms of my thoughts on the higher sense of I, it's an identification with aspects of consciousness that are closer in the emanation hierarchy to this ineffable God/Awareness. The Kabbalistic tree of life provides a nice model of this. Tiferet is the highest sephira that is fully personal, the next four levels above that are various kinds of transpersonal consciousness, with the highest, Keter, corresponding to Pure Awareness. So in my model, 4th Path is defined as the elimination of all attachments to
personal consciousness, i.e., the lower 5 sephira. This is compatible with attachments to transpersonal consciousness remaining. Now, of course, I recognize that this definition might be eccentric, and so be it, it's the one that makes sense to me. Having articulated it just now, I realize that this is a better model for the Bodhisattva ideal than for the arhat ideal. Well, the former is closer to my ideal, so that's what I'll continue to identify 4th Path with it for myself. Other people are free to identify 4th Path with whatever they consider a natural marker based on their own ideal :-) At the end of the day, 4th path is just a word. Maybe, I'm miss using it, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of clear agreement about what it actually amounts to. For everything beyond 3rd path, I think it's more important to know what areas/facets of your life are effortlessly joyful and harmonious, and what areas/facets of your life are not. Regardless of where one is in the insight territory, if one simply focuses on improving those aspects/facets of consciousness that are not yet effortlessly joyful and harmonious, one will end up doing pretty well.
Thanks for your thoughtful responses and questions.